FY2018 Information about the Partial Renewal Opening of the Permanent Exhibition area

At the Partial Renewal Opening which look place on 20 June (Wed), new exhibitions will be opened in two corners (Laboratory for New Media and Tearoom of Zero/One) on 3F of the Permanent Exhibition area and Laboratory to Explore the Frontiers on 5F, in addition to new contents for the large-scale display in the Communication Lobby on the 1F and the Geo-Cosmos globe-like display.

In these exhibitions, a wide variety of methods is being used to show how the global environment and perspectives on life are changing partly as a result of the development of science and technology, while also showcasing how the development of such technology has brought us new views of outer space.

1. New exhibitions

Laboratory for New Media is a space which presents new perspectives on the world, while introducing visitors to the possibilities that cutting-edge information technology offers as a medium of expression. The content of the exhibition is renewed on a regular basis.
The theme of the 20th exhibition is "What is life?" The exhibition displays four artworks; these include one piece created by researcher Prof. Takashi Ikegami and artist Takumi Ueda which was exhibited as part of AOMORI Triennale 2017 (held in Aomori Prefecture in January 2018), and three other works selected by judges and by visitors from among those exhibited at Art Hack Day 2018, an event specializing in art. Ikegami's work poses the fundamental question of "What is life?", while the three works taken from Art Hack Day 2018 seek to express a whole range of reflections in response to this question.

Tearoom of Zero/One uses the medium of art to explore how human consciousness and society are continuously changing along with the development of science and technology.
On display here is "Life (Ku-wall) - no.6," a work by contemporary artist Tatsuo Miyajima who has handled the themes of "life" and "death" for more than 30 years, using digital LED counters as part of his artistic style.

Exhibited work: "Life (Ku-wall) - no.6" by Tatsuo Miyajima
This work expresses the idea of "death" using digital LED counters.
The viewer can see "something" happening here, generated through artificially generated numbers and algorithms as a means of expression; as display changes from life to death, this "something" asks the viewers what the fundamental essence of "life" is.
The algorithm, which is continually changing in a self-propagating manner resembling that of a living organism, was created by Prof. Takashi Ikegami.

Laboratory to Explore the Frontiers: "ALMA--Exploring the Invisible Universe"

Laboratory to Explore the Frontiers is an area that showcases the activities of researchers who have continually taken up new challenges at the cutting edge of their fields, including space and earth science. This exhibition takes up the theme of the ALMA Telescope in the Exploring Deep Space corner.
The ALMA Telescope is a radio telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile, South America, built at an elevation of approximately 5,000m above sea level; it was constructed primarily by Japan, the United States and Europe. Using its 66 gigantic parabolic antennae to receive and analyze the faint radio waves known as "millimeter waves" and "sub-millimeter waves" which are released by cold interstellar matter floating in space, the ALMA Telescope probes the mysteries of the origins of stars, galaxies and of life itself.
The ALMA Telescope has produced a series of results since it went into full-fledged operation in 2013; however, when the project was first inaugurated, measuring millimeter and sub-millimeter waves at the Earth's surface at a high degree of precision was believed to be extremely difficult. The ingenuity of Japanese manufacturing technology played an important role in overcoming this problem. This area of the exhibition presents the story behind this project as well as the latest results that can now be seen from the telescope's measurements, intermingled with a number of real objects from the project which have been put on display.

2. New contents

This video installation shows temperature distribution simulations for Tokyo and Yokohama in the height of summer, when the "heat island" effect develops. The thermal environment is affected by natural phenomena that take place in the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere, and by chemicals discharged by human activities, and other factors. Furthermore, in urban environments, additional heat is generated from various sources, influenced by the distribution and height of buildings in each area, the materials that walls are made from and outdoor machinery; these various factors interact with one another in a multifaceted way that can be challenging to understand. The Earth Simulator, a supercomputer, has incorporated all these factors in order to derive high-accuracy, finely-detailed predictions broken down into approximately 5m-by-5m zones. It is hoped that this data will be used in urban planning, and for minimizing threats to human health.

This display visualizes observation data for carbon dioxide and simulation data for atmospheric pollutants (chemical weather forecasting), and exhibits these as video footage on the Geo-Cosmos global display. Global trends in the concentration levels of carbon dioxide--believed to be a factor behind global warming--and the way that atmospheric pollutants are generated by cities and industrial zones and then dispersed across national borders, can be seen in the form of footage projected onto a Earth-like sphere, enabling viewers to truly grasp the reality of what is happening on our planet.